Chazakah
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: In which we discover why exactly Ziva was so upset by the events with Lee's daughter/sister. No ship as yet.
1. Razi

**A/N: My first NCIS story…in which we learn why Ziva was so entranced by Lee's sister/daughter and why she was so upset when Gibbs told the little girl that Lee was dead. Also, the title, Chazakah, is Hebrew for strong. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own NCIS. Clearly. **

A girl, no more than eighteen, in pigtailed braids and nothing else. She has noted throughout the day the layout of the house, the caliber of the suit the man outside the door of this small room is- was- wearing. She is nothing if not well-trained.

She is also scared out of her mind. She does not think she will be caught; her Persian accent is flawless, and though she does not often find reason to restrain her temper, she long ago learned how to. No, she is as frightened as the role she is playing. Ziva David and Niloufar Khosro are, in this, one and the same: frightened teenage virgins about to be, essentially, raped.

The doorknob rattles.

"Niloufar? Wife?"

Ziva closes her eyes and swallows. She sits on the toilet, grasps her knees, caresses the scrape on the left one with a finger. How long ago was it she had been running upstairs with Tali and tripped? A week? And now she would not see any of them for a year, and Tali-

"I am coming," Ziva says thinly, and steps forward-

…

Her eyes open, and she is startled by a lack of place- not her apartment in D.C., or Tel Aviv, or Paris- she smells- feels- paper? She lifts her head and comes face to face with-

"Tony!" she is on her feet and her guard in seconds. "_What_ are you doing?"

"_Not_ sleeping on the job, Zee-vah," he smirks.

Ziva brushes her forehead with her hand. "I am sorry- I did not sleep well last night." _Or just now_.

"Nightmares or good sex?"

"Your idea of good sex is most women's nightmare, DiNozzo," says Gibbs, striding in followed by Vance and a Middle Eastern man n a very expensive white silk suit.

Ziva's eyes rise to his, and she sits down instantly and averts her face, too late.

"Niloufar?"

…

Vance, Gibbs, the strange man, and Ziva have all disappeared in various directions, leaving Tony and McGee alone and confused. _Very_ confused.

After the man called Ziva by that strange name, there had been a flurry of angry, rapid fire curses in Farsi, Arabic, French, and finally Hebrew when Ziva got too furious to think in any but her native tongue.

None of which, Tony or McGee knew.

"Who _was _that?" McGee asks finally.

"No idea, McGargle," says Tony.

"Whoever he is, I don't think Ziva likes him very much," McGee adds redundantly.

"There's a lot of people Ziva doesn't like very much," Tony says. He pauses. "Though most of them are probably dead…"

"Then how is it you're still alive, Tony?" Ziva slips past him and sits down at her desk with an air of false ordinariness.

"Maybe you like me," Tony suggests.

Ziva forces a laugh. "My father would not be pleased if I ruined his liason with the Americans by killing one simply because he is a donkey's pothole."

"Asshole," McGee corrects, laughing. "Though in Tony's case, he's kind of both."

"Shut up, Probie," Tony says, glaring. "What was all that about earlier, Zee-vah?"

Ziva's head shoots up and her brown eyes shoot javelins. "None of your bees' honey, DiNozzo."

"Beeswax, and since it happened right in front of us, I'd say it is. Who's the rich guy?"

Ziva glares. "His name is Khosro. He is an Iranian businessman with ties to Hamas. Apparently, he is now a valuable American asset. I do not trust him."

"Aw, come on, there's more to it than that," Tony pushes. "Do you know him?"

"Yes," says Ziva, and does not elaborate. "I have been given the rest of the day off and I will be taking it. Goodbye, McGee," she says. She glares at Tony. "DiNozzo."

"That was weird," Tony says when she has gone.

"Tell me about it," says McGee. "She definitely knows something about that guy."

"Not that, Probie- she never calls me DiNozzo."

McGee rolls his eyes.

…

Ziva is at her desk when Tony and McGee come in the next morning- strange enough on its own, given her penchant for tardiness, but-

"Your hair!" Abby, in search of caffeine and with no Gibbs yet in evidence to provide it, has come upstairs and, passing the two shocked male agents, is the first to comment on Ziva's drastic alteration in appearance: Her long curls are gone, her hair instead straight and chopped just above her shoulders.

"I decided it was time for a change," Ziva says, her face revealing nothing.

Tony finally finds his voice. "Last _night_?" he demands.

"Yes, Tony."

"Why?"

"It is my hair and therefore none of your- damn! Your antwax," she tries.

"Beeswax, Ziva."

"She's half right, DiNozzo. Let's see you try Hebrew," says Gibbs, sweeping in with his coffee.

"That's not fair, boss."

"You're right. DiNozzo, McGee, get me everything you can find on a Mahmoud Khosro. Ziva, with me."

"Where are you going, boss?" asks Tony.

Gibbs glares. "Away from you, DiNozzo." Seeing Ziva grab her gear, he adds, "Don't need that, Ziver."

Ziva winces mentally. No gear and her nickname can mean only one thing.

They get on the elevator and ride down two and a half floors before Gibbs presses the stop button.

"Ziva, I know you already talked to Vance, but I'd like to hear it too, if you don't mind."

"Vance didn't tell you?"

"Stop stalling, Officer David."

From Ziver to Officer David in 60 seconds. That had to be some kind of record.

"I was eighteen," Ziva begins. "It was my first undercover assignment, and only my second operation. It was just after Tali died. It was in place of one of my years in the army- my father told me it would be better training, and of more service to Israel."

"What was it, Ziva?" His voice is imperceptibly softer, but Ziva is trained to notice the imperceptible. That tone was for victims and for her, when both their thoughts shifted: Tali and Kelly, Ari and Kate, Shannon and Jenny. The lost.

Ziva breathes deep. "A man in Iran, a businessman. Mossad believed he had ties to Hamas- perhaps even access to some of their planned operations. But Iran-"

"Very difficult to access."

"Yes. So my father set up undercover identities for me and an older agent- father and daughter. This man-Khosro-he-liked young women. Sixteen or so. He wanted to marry again- it was arranged for us to "bump" into him- my "father" to discuss a desire to marry me off-"

Ziva glances at Gibbs. His jaw had set.

"It was a deep undercover operation. My cover- Niloufar- married Khosro. For a year, I lived there. It took me a year to secure the necessary information and a way out. A year," Ziva repeated, emphasizing the time, looking at Gibbs again. "Khosro," she adds, her voice betraying the slightest hint of anger, "did not believe in birth control."

She can hear, when Gibbs next speaks, that he is shocked. "You had a child."

"A daughter," Ziva says. Her throat aches and her eyes begin to hurt, drying out suddenly as if her body is working against her, conspiring to make her cry. She will not accede. "Her name is Ruana, but for me she is Razi. Hebrew for my secret." She closes her eyes and bites her lip hard. She can feel Gibbs waiting.

"We could not get her out," she says finally, through her teeth, clutching her Star of David, letting the points bite into her palm. "I pray every day that she is _nothing_ like me because if she is she will not survive there, Gibbs. He took her to Saudi Arabia after I left- she will never raise her eyes to a man's, never run, never feel the sun or the wind in her hair- never- I don't know if he sent her to school, taught her to read-" Ziva catches control of herself, banishes the sob in her throat to the tight coil of unshed tears in her stomach. "She is twelve, Gibbs. She could be _married_ already."

Gibbs says nothing, merely opens his arms to let Ziva's resolve collapse again, and again she steps into them and cries hard against his shoulder, for Ruana and Tali and Ari and for herself. She cries as she did not when her father told her Ruana was irrecoverable, that there were sacrifices and casualties, that she would have other children.

When she is done, she speaks again. "He is a sadistic bastard, Gibbs." She pulls up the sleeve of her shirt to reveal her bicep, marked by slight, circular scars. "Cigars. Cuban. This deal he has made, Gibbs- he is not sincere. He hates America. There is something else going on here-"

He stops her. "I know, Ziva."

"Are we going to do something about it?"

"We already are."


	2. Samson

**A/N: Short, I know, but it's late, I have a cold, and I just wanted to get something up, so here you go. Thanks so much for the reviews! I'm sorry I didn't respond individually- I'll try to next time- but this week has been absolutely insane. **

**Disclaimer: Does it really need to be said? **

**Samson**

Ziva and Gibbs walk out of the elevator together, Gibbs' face in its usual impassive cast, and Ziva working very hard to make herself look as though she hasn't just cried.

"McGee," Gibbs says, "Whaddya got?"

Tony waits until McGee is in the middle of trying to explain something technical before scooting his swivel chair over to Ziva in what he thinks is a surreptitious manner (it's not).

"What's going on?" he demands in a stage whisper. Ziva looks up from her papers and tries to push her hair behind her shoulders, forgetting that it is gone. She settles for twisting the shorter, now much curlier, mass up behind her head repeatedly, lacking a hair tie.

"_Nothing_, DiNozzo," she says.

"You're lying," he tells her. "You never call me DiNozzo. You cut off all your hair. You started swearing in like six different languages at some sugar daddy type who-"

"STOP!" Ziva's hands crash down on her desk with all the (considerable) force she can muster. McGee stops talking. Gibbs turns to stare. Tony's face is frozen in an unintentional smirk he's forgotten to remove in his shock at Ziva's volatile reaction. "I- I am sorry," she mutters quietly, and sits back down, swinging her hair loose again so she can hide behind it despite its length.

"What did I say?" Tony whispers to her.

"What have you not said?" she asks, too tired to think of anything cleverer.

"What?"

"Exactly. Go away."

"No. Ziva. God. I'm your partner, yeah? How come you get to be worried about me and I don't get to be worried about you?"

"You can be worried about me all you want, but it would be nice if you could do it at your own desk."

"You know what I mean."

"No, Tony, I do not know what you mean. What is it that you want?"

"Let's start with why you cut your hair?"

"I felt like it."

"Abby told me that you said that your father said it was your only feminine attribute when you were little."

She stands, stretches, lengthens her body deliberately and glares at him. "Well, Tony, that was when I was little, as you said. I now have other feminine attributes, yes?"

"Well, yes-"

"Good. We are settled. I am female. Thank you for that."

"Ziva-"

"It is easier to deal with this way. That is all, Tony. I promise."

"Are we still talking about your hair?"

"We are no longer talking about anything, Tony."

She turns and walks off, ostensibly to the vending machines. Tony swivels around in his chair, only to notice that Gibbs and McGee have also disappeared.

…

"I have it on good authority that this guy is _not_ looking out for America's best interests, Director."

"They rarely are, Agent Gibbs. What matters is that he has valuable information that he's willing to turn over to us."

Gibbs glares. "Israel know about this?"

Vance glares back. "Should they?"

"Considering I have it on even better authority that they've done some seriously deep investigating on this guy, I'd say

Gibbs glares. "Israel know about this?"

Vance glares back. "Should they?"

"Considering I have it on even better authority that they've done some seriously deep investigating on this guy, I'd say _yeah_."

Vance sighs. "_What _authority?"

"You know what authority."

"She was eighteen, Gibbs. That was twelve years ago. People change."

"Assholes who rape teenage girls and take away-" Gibbs stops, realizing he isn't sure how much Ziva has told the director. "Assholes who rape teenage girls don't change," he says finally.

"He may be an opportunist, but so's our government, and if his opportunism matches ours…" Vance trails off. "I'm sorry, Gibbs. She doesn't have to deal with him, but we are going to work with him."

"On _what_?"

…

McGee is trying to interrogate Abby, and he is failing. Mainly because he has yet to get a question in.

"What's going on with Ziva? Why did she cut her hair? Why is everyone freaking out? Is Gibbs mad at the director? Is the director mad at Gibbs? Is Gibbs mad at Ziva? Is Ziva mad at-" Abby pauses and considers. "Nevermind. I'm sure she is."

"Abby, I don't know any more than you do." _Probably less_.

Abby gives him a dubious look.

"I swear!"

"On your computer?"

"Yes!"

"_All _of your computers?"

"Yes!"

She gives him a long, considering look. "Okay."

"Okay? That's it?"

"Yes?"

"Okay." McGee repeats it, half to himself. "Okay. So…tell me everything you know about Ziva."


	3. Revanche

**A/N: Deepest apologies for the delay- school continues to be difficult despite that myth about second semester of senior year…it's a lie, don't believe it. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously. **

As soon as she is out of Tony's sight, Ziva leans against the ugly orange wall- hardly comforting- and begins to cry. Hard. There is too much of her to fit into her skin and the crying isn't helping-it never does, which is why she hates to do it- so finally Ziva pushes herself off the damn wall and hits it. Hard. Again, and now she is punching and sobbing and she's chipped the paint and dented the wall and bruised her hand and she's so out of herself that she- _she_, of all people- doesn't hear Tony come up behind her, doesn't know he's there until he's taken her fists in his hands from behind and said, "Ssh."

She struggles and he somehow- Oh, she is _off_ today- manages to turn her around and enfold her until she stops trying to punch him.

Then he lets her go, and she stands for a moment, arms folded, staring at the toes of her boots. When she meets his eyes she knows there's no running from this.

"Ziva," he says, no smirk, which makes her wince, "_What _is going on?"

"What, do I have to announce it over the PA system?"

"We don't have a-" Tony starts, then thinks better of it.

"Should I put it up on the monitors so everyone can read it? Maybe take out an advertisement in the paper?"

"Ziva." He's giving her a rare, serious look, and she grips her forehead in the span of her hand, rolls her head back and forth before she can start.

"When I was eighteen," she begins, not looking at him, "I went undercover."

…

Gibbs and McGee are at Khosro's D.C. apartment. They are not supposed to be there. At all.

McGee is trying to pick the lock, because they are _trying _to be surreptitious.

It's not working.

"Boss, I'm sorry, Ziva usually does this."

Gibbs' face shifts, just slightly, but it's enough.

"If you don't mind my asking," McGee begins, hesitantly.

"Depends on what you're asking, McGee."

"Why didn't you _bring _Ziva, Boss?"

"I do."

McGee is highly confused. "What?"

"Mind you asking."

"Okay, well." McGee sighs. "I can't open this door."

"Easy enough." Gibbs takes the butt of his gun and cracks the door with it, then kicks it the rest of the way in.

"Boss! No one was supposed to know we were here!"

"They won't."

"But you just-"

"They won't know _we _were here." Gibbs steps through the doorway. "You coming?"

…

"I thought McGee said your first time was on a weapons carrier," says Tony, because he doesn't know what else to say, and thinks he ought to say something. Ziva's eyes zipper shut before he's half done speaking and her face sets into stone.

"I wasn't counting- _that_," Ziva spits. She won't say the word _rape_, and doesn't know what else to call _it_, because, really, she was complicit, wasn't she? She doesn't like the idea that she had no part in her own destruction. "For- for the love of _everything_, Tony, you _bastard_!"

"I'm sorry, Ziva, I-"

Too late. She's already gone, and Tony is a little afraid of whether or not his door will explode when he goes home.

…

McGee left Khosro's address on his desk, like a fool. So Ziva is driving like a madwoman, in a flurry of fury, her gun at her side. She gets there, her lockpick already in her hand, only to discover the door kicked in.

_I hope they didn't kill him_, she thinks, imagining burglars. She puts her hand on her gun (the NCIS-issued Sig, not the Glock at her ankle), and steps forward.


	4. Dinah

**A/N: Sorry about the delay. Our school literary magazine's been taking up more of my time than I'd anticipated, and college things, and AP tests coming up soon, for which I actually do want college credit, so that whole thing about second semester senior year being easy? Not true. **

**Disclaimer: If I owned NCIS, you'd be watching this, not reading it, yes? **

Gibbs and McGee hear the creak of the broken door and tense.

"Boss," McGee says tentatively, "should we hide?"

Gibbs gives him a scathing look. "_No_," he says, and pulls out his gun, pointing it at the door. He tilts his head, listening. "It's not him-" he starts, and stops as the barrel of the intruder's gun protrudes from the hall.

"NCIS!" Gibbs and the intruder yell at the same time. Then-

"Ziva?"

"Gibbs?"

Gibbs glares at her. "If I weren't here and he was?"

"I was-" Ziva glances at McGee. "I was only going to- get some information. I was _not _going to kill him, Gibbs."

"Even if you didn't like the information?"

Ziva's face darkens. "_Yes_."

"She's not here, Ziva."

"Who's not here?" asks McGee.

Ziva bites her lip and addresses Gibbs. "I _know_."

Gibbs softens a little and points at an extraneous door, leading, presumably, to the bedroom. "Look in there."

Ziva, her eyes as full of questions as McGee's, obeys. "There's nothing-" she starts, after a moment.

Gibbs cuts her off with his hand. "On the dresser."

She does, and her voice returns to him shaken. "That- that cannot be a photograph of her, Gibbs."

"She's the right age."

She emerges, holding the photograph like her knife, brown eyes full of something like terror. "It's- like looking at _me_." And it is, it's strange to her, to find a pair of her own eyes so opaque, the mind behind them closed to hers. She shuts her matching eyes tight and bites the inside of her lip and tries to think of a prayer or a poem or a song to hold down her flying thoughts, but she cannot; there's nothing but a face that's nearly hers, but shorn of apparent anger.

McGee's eyes flit from her to Gibbs and back again, resting finally on her face. He's never seen Ziva look like that before: anguished and astonished at once.

Gibbs has; he's seen her eyes go wide at something she's done herself, stare down at what she thought she knew exposed as foreign and terrifying on a basement floor, which for all its sawdust couldn't staunch a pool of blood that large, and that's what she looks like now, like she's staring at her half-brother's corpse instead of a photograph of a daughter she hasn't seen in twelve years.

…

Tony wanders down to Abby's lab, bemused, with the vague intention of asking her about either Ziva or Khosro or both. But when he gets there, he hasn't even a second's chance to ask her a question; she's pouring forth with them before he's even through the door.

"Tony! What is going on? Ziva's acting all weird and McGee asked me about her and I haven't seen Gibbs in _forever_, but he told me to look up information on this guy Khosro, and then the director came down and told me _not _to, but I did it anyway-"

"Abby-"

"Do you know what's going on with Ziva?"

"I- well- yeah, but-"

"But what? Tell me!"

"Well, Abby, I mean, I don't think she'd want me to, you know, and it's Ziva, so she might just kill both of us if she finds out."

"Yeah, well maybe she'd kill _you_." Abby pauses. "Then again, _I _could kill you, too."

Tony heaves a long sigh. "Fine. But you _cannot_ tell her I told you this."

"Or what?"

"Or I'll kill you, and I really don't care whether I get caught."

"Why not?"

"Ziva would kill me before I ever got arrested."

…

Gibbs kicks her out, and she drives back alone, cutting off more cars than usual, leaving a symphony of car horns directed by raised middle fingers in her wake. She slams every door she comes into contact with on her way back to her desk, and to make up for not being able to slam the elevator doors she stabs the button with her own middle finger and stalks rather than walks back to her chair.

"Hey, Ziva," Tony says. His phone rings, and he answers it. "Yeah. Yeah, no, she's back. Well- Abby, I don't know if that's a good idea-" he stops and looks at the receiver. Abby's clearly hung up on him. "But I guess you're doing it anyway," he concludes, and slams down the phone.

"What's Abby doing?" Ziva asks, trying to calm herself down.

The elevator dings.

"Apparently she's coming up here," says Tony.

Abby runs, awkward in her boots, over to Ziva, still sitting in her chair, and hugs her nonetheless.

"Hi, Abby," Ziva says, bewildered.

"I am so sor-"

Tony clears his throat significantly and glares at her over Ziva's shoulder.

"I mean, I'm sorry, because I realized, I don't hug you as much as everyone else, so I thought I would make up for it now!" Abby says, convincingly, and steps back.

"O…kay…." Ziva looks more bewildered than ever.

The elevator dings again and Gibbs come striding out, McGee trailing behind.

"Whadda we got?"

"Gibbs! Um, well, this guy hasn't been charged with anything, it doesn't even look like he's been investigated, but he's got some _shady_ business connections."

"Terrorism?"

"Well, there's some tenuous links to a charity connected to Hamas, but mainly it looks like drugs. There's some connection to Russian oligarchs, in particular."

"Anything else?"

Abby shakes her head.

"I got something, Boss," McGee says from his computer.

"What?"

"Well, before we left, I set up some more detailed search parameters for international police-"

"McGee. Just tell me what it is."

"Uh, well, he was never charged, so that's probably why it didn't show up on Abby's searches, but it looks like in 2007 the Russian police picked him up for having sex with an underage girl, but released him once they got a call from one of his connections."

Ziva's face goes white and she walks, fast, out of the room.

Abby and Tony exchange glances, then look at Gibbs.

"She tell you?" he asks. Tony nods. Abby shakes her head guiltily. "DiNozzo. Go after her," he says.

McGee stares at all of them in turn. "What the hell is going on?" he demands.

No one answers him.


	5. Nazis Aren't Nothing

**Disclaimer: Still don't own NCIS. **

She's in the ladies' room. He raps on the door.

"Ziva?"

Another woman, who works in Legal, walks out and glares at him. He gives her what he thinks is a charming smile.

"My partner's in there…" he tries. She snorts and walks off. He raps on the door again, harder. "Ziva David!"

Her voice comes back, muffled. "_What_?"

"Uh…do you want to talk about it?"

"_No_."

"Um…okay, then, can you come out? Because Gibbs wants me to get you."

"Too bad."

"Ziva, please?"

"I'm not coming out. If you want to talk to me, you can come in."

"What the- no! I'm not going in there."

"Fine."

"Fine." He takes two steps, then thinks about the consequences about going back to the bullpen alone. He goes back to the door. "Is anyone else in there?"

"Why?"

"Just- is there?"

"I do not think so."

"Fine. I'm coming in."

She's perched on the sink, trying to look as if she hadn't just cried, but the edges of her eyes are red, and her nose and cheeks are suffused with furious blood.

He doesn't know what to say. "I'm sorry about what I said earlier," he tries. "I- I just didn't really know…how to respond…to that."

"Well, Tony, not being a complete asshole would have been a good start, yes?"

"Hey! You got asshole right!"

"Yes, I did." She's glaring at him.

"Sorry. I- I'm not very good at dealing with stuff like this."

She jumps off the sink. _Shit_.

"Oh, _you're _not very good at dealing with _stuff like this_? Well, tell me, Tony, how do you think I feel? You think you are having a difficult time _dealing _with this? My _daughter _is living with a _pedophile_ who would want her dead if he knew who she really is, and _you _are having a hard time dealing with this? Well I am _so _sorry for you!"

It's quiet for a moment. "Hebephile," says Tony.

"_What_?"

"He's a hebephile, not a pedophile."  
She turns around slowly, her eyes huge and furious. She advances on him, and he can't move, he's staring at her, watching her get closer with each slow, deliberate step. He's not sure whether she's going to kiss him or-

"OW!"

She's slapped him across the face, hard enough to make him buckle at the waist. She retreats to her sink and laughs contemptuously at his pain. "I could have kicked you in the balloons," she says.

"Balls," he grits out through his teeth. "It's balls."

"Really? Because if you apply enough pressure, they sort of pop like a-"

"Enough! I don't even want to know how you know that!"

"Because I did it to a former Nazi once."

"You _what_?"

"It was somewhat fitting, really. Destroying his capacity to reproduce."

"Oh yeah, because an eye for an eye really works."

"_What_?"

"Well, you said it was fitting-"

"That was _an _individual, Tony, and I did not even kill him!"

"Oh, well then."

"Well then what? I did not even kill him, and he killed six million of my people!"

"Ziva, you weren't even _born_. Was your _father _even alive then?"

"No, and if that man had had his way neither of us ever would have been!"

Tony lets her breathe hard and glare for a moment. "Ziva, are we seriously fighting about Nazis?"

"I think we are fighting about whether or not it is justifiable to pop their balls."

He snorts, and she smiles a little. He laughs full out, and her smile widens into a grin.

"Ready to go back?"

"I suppose so, yes."

When they're walking down the hall together, he leans toward her.

"You know, I don't think he'd hurt her. She's still young for him, and his own blood."

She freezes up.

"Ziva? I'm sorry- I-"

"I do not care, Tony. Whether he has hurt her or not- I _will _get her back."

"I believe you," he says, and turns to face her. "And I'd like to help you, if you'd let me."

She smiles, unfamiliarly genuine. "Okay," she says.


	6. Close Encounter

_Tel Aviv, 1997_

She returns to life slowly.

The night she escapes is a dream, surreal; the first agent, who posed as her father before, and a second, a few years older than she, as her brother, pretending to have come for her birthday, visiting when they knew Khosro would be on his way out of the house.

They'd see him, invite legitimacy- and then run away, straight to the airport, with her and a set of passports under false, French names.

They hadn't one for the baby. No Ruana, no Razi, no little Renee DuBois, daughter of Helene and Michel, granddaughter of Pierre.

Ziva had been incommunicado, as Tony would say. They did not know there _was_ a Ruana, a Razi.

"Can't we- can't we get her a ticket?" Ziva begged, hysterical. "Does a baby this young"- she was three months- "even _need _a passport?"

"We can't take the chance, Ziva," Michael- his name was Michael, she remembered as he stood before her, this boy speaking to her like her father, vested with his authority, telling her what she could do and not do, said.

"You want me to leave her here, with him?" Ziva demanded, brown-eyed glare meeting brown-eyed glare.

"Yes."

"Why?" It was, on the face of it, an odd question, but Michael answered it straightforwardly.

"Our orders are to retrieve you. Your father said nothing-" a rather scathing glance at dark little Razi, nestled in Ziva's arms- "of the half-breed child."

"If I were not holding the 'half-breed child,'" Ziva spat, her old temper flaring back easily from a year of disuse, "I would slap you, and that's if you were lucky."

She had perhaps never been so serious in her life, but Michael only laughed, and she hissed back at him.

In the end, Michael put his thumb against her carotid until she passed out, and she only woke up in the airport, each of her companions with a hand locked against one of her wrists.

Much later, when she and Michael became lovers, no one was more surprised than she. Because perhaps Razi could have gotten out, perhaps they would not have needed documents; perhaps, if not for the cocky interference of Michael Rivkin, Ziva's daughter would have come with her.

Razi David would have come home.

_Washington, D.C. 2008_

"Jesus Christ, Gibbs," says Fornell, "It's like Ari all over again. What're you calling this white whale?"

"If you recall," Gibbs says icily, "I was right about Ari, Fornell."

"There is that," Fornell says amicably. "What is it this time?"

"I'd just like to talk to him, Fornell. That's all."

"Really?"

"Really."

Fornell sighs, throws up his hands. "I'll see what I can do."

…

"Absolutely not."

"Please?"

"No."

"Why?"

"The FBI tends to get pissy when I return their assets _dead_, Ziva."

She gives him a look so achingly sweet he almost relents. "Gibbs, please."

_Please, Daddy? Please please __**please**__ let me stay over at Maddie's? I'll be good, I promise. _

_ Damn. _

"No marks, and he sure as hell better not be dead when you're done, Officer David."

"No marks. Alive. I can handle that."

"Mental and physical faculties intact."

_Shit_. "Fine."

So she opens the door and _there he is_.

"Niloufar," he says, standing.

"It is Officer David. Sit." She slams her file- full of irrelevancies, but good for effect- on the table and gives him her darkest glare.

"You have cut your hair. A pity, I always liked it."

"The two are not unrelated."

"So you were what, an NCIS agent, even then? I did not think the United States did such things."

"I am not an NCIS agent," Ziva says, and she can't help the little smile she can feel starting on her face. Oh, he will know fear.

"Then whatever are you doing here?"

She leans across the table, and makes her eyes bright, half-innocent, half-seduction, and waits just long enough to shift them to terrifying. "I am Mossad."

He hides it well, but she sees the little flash of horror go and leans back smirking. There are words that make that flash cross her eyes, too, but she can hide it completely now. She's learned her lessons well.

He hisses a curse at her in Farsi and she hisses an equally vitriolic one back. The exchange is repeated and finally ends with Ziva yelling, "Son of a toad-licking whore, I will tear out your entrails with my fingers and eat them!"

In the observation room, Tony gives a whispered _Whoa_ in admiration of the curse.

Ziva steps away and paces behind the table. Whips around, slams hands down on the table: "WHERE. IS. MY. DAUGHTER?"

Khosro begins to laugh, and, behind the glass, Gibbs tenses.

"What is it, boss?" asks Tony.

"Bastard's gonna say something stupid," says Gibbs, and he's right:

"You'll never find the little half-Jew bitch-"

-and there is a sudden cacophony of movement-

-hands on throat, body flies across the table, and she's taking his air, hitting his head against the wall, once, twice, three times before Gibbs and Tony are in and pulling her off of him, lifting her bodily, out into the hallway, and she's still screaming like a madwoman.

When she has quieted and can breathe again, she turns the beams of her eyes on Gibbs and begs without speaking to go back in.

"Not now, Ziver," he says, hand on her shoulder.

She closes her eyes and makes her mouth small; a posture of defeat.

"If he doesn't talk tonight, I'll let you at him again tomorrow."

Hope sparks. "Yes?"

"One condition."

She's back to standing tall, suppressing a smile. "Yes, Gibbs?"

"Go home. Go to sleep."

She knows better than to protest. She is gone almost before he looks up.


End file.
